A variety of techniques are known for fabricating and assembling composite structures using composite components. These techniques may include bonding cured components together, co-bonding of cured components to an uncured composite component, cocuring of uncured components and the use of fasteners to assemble cured components. The cocuring technique may involve cocuring uncured components that are held in alignment with each other by cure tooling which may be relatively complex. The assembled components and the cure tooling may be vacuum bagged and then cured together though the application of elevated temperatures and pressures, often within an autoclave. The cocuring technique is labor and tool intensive, and may also require relatively expensive capital equipment such as an autoclave. Moreover, in order to produce composite structures having the requisite quality for higher performance applications, precise alignment and process controls may be required.
Accordingly, there is a need for a method and apparatus for fabricating composite structures using cocured components that overcomes the deficiencies discussed above.